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Month: November 2016

Nationalist fear-mongering of refugees and terrorism is a consequence of the U.S. turning Middle East nations into failed states – creating the conditions for the rise of ISIS and the global refugee crisis.

I had written like 70% of this article months ago. It had been part of a different article I’d written back in September about the war in Syria, but I took it out for a variety of reasons before the election.

I wasn’t always set on publishing it to be honest. But I thought it timely as we are not just reflecting on 2016 this New Years, but the end of eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Gallup found that “terrorism and national security” topped the chart when it came to issues that both Democrats and Republicans cared most about. In fact, over half of Americans (54%) felt that the U.S. should stop accepting refugees altogether because of national security concerns.

When we look back on the Obama era, Benghazi should be remembered for its far more important role in fueling the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS. A reality which has produced today’s global refugee crisis and ultimately fostered the environment of fear which helped bring Trump to power.

I’m not going to re-hash the whole Benghazi controversy here because most people don’t even remember what it was about. But I do want to call attention to one particular aspect of it.

Why were the 4 Americans who died in Benghazi even there to begin with?

It’s a seemingly simple question after all these years, but I bet most of us don’t know the answer, or even really thought to ask.

Of the four Americans that died in Benghazi, two were security contractors with the CIA and two were employees of the US State Department. One of whom was the ambassador to Libya.

It would be easy enough to assume that they were all in Libya doing diplomatic work of some kind…because that seems like their job. But about a year ago the Department of Defense declassified an intelligence briefing from October 2012, one month after the terror attack, which would explain quite clearly what the U.S. was doing Benghazi.

“2. During the immediate aftermath, of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

3. The weapons shipped from Libya to Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125mm and 15mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea -155mm]”

Why were weapons being shipped out of Libya and into Syria between 2011-2012?

Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens – first sitting ambassador to be killed since 1979

It was during this time that the peaceful demonstrations against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad were devolving into an armed resistance.

The Red Cross officially declared the turmoil in Syria a civil war in July 2012. The attack at Benghazi occurred in September 2012. This is the beginning of the destructive Syrian civil war which has played out in front of our eyes for the last 5 years.

It had been no secret that the U.S. wanted Assad to go. But the much better kept secret was what role we played in the unrest in Syria turning into a civil war to begin with.

During the initial Benghazi hearings Congressman Devin Nunes asked CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper point blank whether or not weapons were being sent from Libya into Syria.

Nunes: Are we aware of any arms that are leaving that area and going into Syria?Morell: Yes, sir.Clapper: Yes.Nunes: And who is coordinating that?Morell: I believe largely the [REDACTED] are coordinating that.Nunes: They are leaving Benghazi ports are going to Syria?Morell: I don’t know how they are getting the weapons from Libya to Syria. But there are weapons going from Libya to Syria. And there are probably a number of actors involved in that. One of the biggest are the [REDACTED]

Nunes: And, were the the CIA folks that were there, were they helping coordinate that, or were they watching it, were they gathering information about it?

Morrell: Sir, the focus of my officers in Benghazi was [REDACTED]

While U.S. officials left it ambiguous as to how the weapons were going from Libya to Syria or what role the CIA played in that transfer, famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an explosive article in the London Review of Books in April 2014 uncovering the much larger story behind Benghazi.

“The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida.

The “rat line” to transfer weapons from Libya, to Turkey, into Syria

By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities.

Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer.”

Retired Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were the two CIA contractors killed in Benghazi

Of course, one doesn’t need to take Seymour Hersh’s word for exposing the international gun-running operation taking place at Benghazi.

On September 6th, 2012, five days before the Benghazi attack, a Libyan-flagged vessel called Al Entisar was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, 35 miles from the Syrian border. The ship carried heavy weaponry including surface-to-air missiles known as MANPADs which found their way into the hands of Syrian rebels. These sophisticated weapons were used to shoot down Assad and Russian helicopters and aircraft.

On the night of the attack on September 11th, in what became his last public meeting, Ambassador Chris Stevens reportedly met with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin to negotiate the weapons transfers out of Libya and into Syria.

Three days later, another Libyan ship docked in Turkey “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria”. The shipment weighed over 400 tons and included SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Libyan official Abdul Basit Haroun would later publicly admit that he was letting weapons leave the port of Benghazi to reach the Syrian rebels. “They know we are sending guns to Syria,” Haroun said. “Everyone knows.”

Lighter shipments of weapons were snuck directly into smaller Syrian ports, as the original DoD intelligence report said, but the much heavier, deadly weaponry was going through a secret command center near the Syrian border jointly run by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.

Last week, Reuters reported that, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey had established a secret base near the Syrian border to help direct vital military and communications support to Assad’s opponents.

This “nerve center” is in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to Incirlik, a U.S. air base where U.S. military and intelligence agencies maintain a substantial presence.

NBC said the shoulder-fired missiles, also known as MANPADs, had been delivered to the rebels via Turkey.

If it were not already bad enough that the U.S. was illegally smuggling weapons out of Libya, a country whose government we had just toppled with NATO’s help, who exactly were the Syrian rebels receiving this “vital military and communications support”?

B. The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.

C. The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China and Iran support the regime

Syrian rebel holding surface-to-air missile, known as a MANPAD

It wasn’t just the DIA reporting that extremist militant groups were leading the opposition to Assad. The defense consultancy IHS Jane reported at the time that more than half the rebel fighters in Syria had some hardline Islamist affiliation.

“The insurgency is now dominated by groups which have at least an Islamist viewpoint on the conflict. The idea that it is mostly secular groups leading the opposition is just not borne out.” – Charles Lister, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute

It’s hard to imagine that at the same time U.S. intelligence was reporting that literal jihadists were leading the opposition to Assad…that we decided to covertly ship weapons to them.

Within a year of the Syrian civil war, one of the leading jihadi opposition groups, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), banded together with a range of other salafist militia groups to form ISIS.

The origin of ISIS as an “anti-Assad” fighting force is never really reckoned with when we talk about the conflict in Syria today. Nor the extent to which the United States contributed to its rise to power.

In an e-mail to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton rather plainly pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia and Qatar for providing “financial and logistic support to ISIL”. But the U.S. has played perhaps equally as important a role.

“He was a perfect soldier from his first days, and everyone knew he was a star,” an unnamed former comrade who is still active in the Georgian military told McClatchy DC. “We were well trained by American special forces units, and he was the star pupil.”

Batirashvili reappeared in Syria in 2013 commanding the jihadist Syrian rebel group Jaysh al Muhajireen, before he swore allegiance to ISIS and became their commander of military operations.

His military skills were so successful that Michael Cecire, an analyst of extremism at the Foreign Policy Research Institute commented that “Batirashvili’s ability to demonstrate ISIS’ tactical prowess attracted fighters in droves from other factions and tipped the scales in foreign fighter flow and recruitment.”

Though Batirashvili was killed in a drone strike just 5 months ago in July, he is but a part of one of the most destructive chapters in American foreign policy history.

The decision to arm extremist groups to overthrow the Syrian government has led to this reality:

Oddly enough, this reality has its roots in one of the most loathed political scandals of the outgoing Obama administration. One that will no doubt be remembered as a “partisan witch hunt” which found no evidence of wrongdoing by anyone.

I doubt many of us were paying close attention to international politics back in September 2012, when many of us were in high school or starting college, but the attack at Benghazi was incredibly significant for what was happening at the time.

Not only did it occur 2 months before Obama’s re-election bid against Mitt Romney, but the attack risked publicly exposing an ongoing covert operation to illegally arm extremist rebel groups in Syria.

But Hillary didn’t need the Benghazi charade to be exposed in order to lose the election.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

the damage to her honest and trustworthiness poll numbers that the Benghazi investigation to lose the election

To help digest what you just read, it would be useful to have some background.

During those short two years, when most of us were in high school or starting college, one of the most important events in world history was happening – the Arab Spring.

This was a wave of popular uprisings broke out across the Middle East and north Africa that was borne out of discontent with a lack of political freedoms, high unemployment, corruption and poverty. Within a year the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen had been overthrown while several more faced continued unrest and crackdowns. It was the most significant political re-organization of the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

In Libya, the United States played a central role in the removal of president Muammar Gaddafi. That’s a separate story at the very bottom of this article if you care, but after the fall of Libya

across the pond in Syria the peaceful protests were beginning to turn into violent clashes as the government began suppressing dissent.

Hillary Clinton herself admitted that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have respectfully given are “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region” would give tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, far more than to any other charitable group in the world.

One could easily remember Benghazi as the partisan witch hunt which ended up proving no evidence of wrong-doing and helped create a base of fanatical of partisans with “Killary”, “Hillary for Prison” and “Lock Her Up” chants

One could also remember Benghazi as the centerpiece as one of the most destructive decisions made by the United States

Benghazi was a driving force for so many of the reasons Trump won the election. Partially because of the effect that it had in damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But perhaps more so because it exposed the

In the Democratic party’s post-mortem over how they could have lost the election to Donald Trump there have been a number of explanations given. Many of them center around how we ignored the problems of “the white working class”. Others have interpreted it as a rejection of “the establishment” – the so-called elites in D.C. and New York, the news media, etc.

So I went around asking a few friends and co-workers what they thought the most important issue of the election was.

Both phases of Operation Zero Footprint produced uniquely disastrous results in Libya and Syria.

Most people tune into politics at a certain period of time when it is prevalent in social media or news, rather than seeing things as a continuum of events. This is one of my principle gripes with the media in that they very often tell you that something happened but not very much why it happened, what happened before and after it and how the political reality communicated to us is really just one series of sequential events that television and media portray to us through the Internet, TV and radio.

So let’s go back to 2012. This may be the most consequential year in Obama’s term and for the entire Middle East at large.

So I’m just going to narrate a series of sequential events before and after the terrorist attack in Benghazi which is so infamously marked in our brains now.

Here’s some context.

The attack in Benghazi occurred on September 11th, 2012. (Yep, one of the classic factoids of Benghazi is that it occurred on the 11th anniversary of 9/11). But there are a few dates that came before and after which are almost equally important.

First, October 21st, 2011: This was the day Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was

that a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict came and disappeared

more important fact about the date is that it was 2 months before the 2012 election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Second, November 8th, 2012: Today was Election Day for Barack Obama’s re-election race against Mitt Romney. I got to vote for the first time in my life and my homeboy Obama got his second term.

The illegal funneling of weapons into the region to arm opposition groups not only increased the scope and scale of the bloody conflicts in the Middle East but resulted arming jihadist groups in both countries and effectively blocked any diplomatic solutions to resolve the conflict as adversaries felt emboldened to arm their side of the war because we were.

In order to fully understand the scope of the operation in Syria, it’s important to understand how the first phase was carried out in Libya as it would have significant implications for how the Syria phase would take place and why certain decisions were made the way they were.

Let’s back up.

During those short two years, when most of us were in high school or starting college, one of the most important events in world history was happening – the Arab Spring.

This was a wave of popular uprisings broke out across the Middle East and north Africa that was borne out of discontent with a lack of political freedoms, high unemployment, corruption and poverty. Within a year the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen had been overthrown while several more faced continued unrest and crackdowns. It was the most significant political re-organization of the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

In Libya, the United States played a central role in the removal of president Muammar Gaddafi. That’s a separate story at the very bottom of this article if you care, but after the fall of Libya

across the pond in Syria the peaceful protests were beginning to turn into violent clashes as the government began suppressing dissent.

Hillary Clinton herself admitted that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have respectfully given are “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region” would give tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, far more than to any other charitable group in the world.

Benghazi was a driving force for so many of the reasons Trump won the election. Partially because of the effect that it had in damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But perhaps more so because it exposed the

For those people I mentioned who may be wondering where they were between 2011 and 2012, if

As we wind down Barack Obama’s presidency over these next few weeks, everyone will be

Despite how little Libya was brought up during the election it may have been the most important foreign policy event of Obama’s presidency. Not just because of its effect on the turmoil in the Middle East today, but because of the polarizing scandal it left in its wake – Benghazi.

To half the country, it will always be remembered as a partisan witch hunt against Hillary Clinton. While for another half the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens

But this is because much of the Congressional investigation into the security failure which saw Ambassador Chris Stevens, pictured below, and 3 other Americans were die in the US consulate in Benghazi

Operation Zero Footprint is the not-so-secret story of the covert mission coordinated between the U.S., U.K., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE to overthrow Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad

One thing that consistently amazed me in watching this year’s election coverage is how little anyone seemed to care about what American foreign policy is. Our election, and people’s interest in politics, is so often centered around fundamental culture conflicts

2. During the immediate aftermath, of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sixed and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

3. The weapons shipped from Libya to Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125mm and 15mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea -155mm]

Nunes: Are we aware of any arms that are leaving that area and going into Syria?Morell: Yes, sir.Clapper: Yes.Nunes: And who is coordinating that?Morell: I believe largely the [REDACTED] are coordinating that.Nunes: They are leaving Benghazi ports are going to Syria?Morell: I don’t know how they are getting the weapons from Libya to Syria. But there are weapons going from Libya to Syria. And there are probably a number of actors involved in that. One of the biggest are the [REDACTED]Nunes: And were the CIA folks that were there, were they helping

Kennedy: The first–the chanting and the chanting and an explosion and gunfire and the rush on the gate were I won’t say simultaneous, but very, in a very,very compressed time frame.

Westmoreland: Okay. Wouldn’t that be conclusive evidence that there wasn’t a demonstration outside?Kennedy: [Redacted]Westmoreland: No, I got you.Morell:It is conclusive, sir. Absolutely.Westmoreland: It is conclusive. So that is done. There is not anymore. Because I thought Mr. Clapper, General Clapper had said there was still some questions rolling around. I may have misunderstood you, sir.Morell: There are a lot of questions rolling around. That is not one of them.Westmoreland: I don’t want to get Director Clapper upset right now. So there is definite evidence that there was no protest.Morell:Yes, sir.Clapper:There was no protests within eyeshot or earshot of the Annex.

There are some illuminating and useful details in the report. One important focus of the panel’s probe was the CIA, which initially escaped public scrutiny because its presence in Benghazi was supposed to be a secret. The report broadly chastised the Defense Department, the CIA and the State Department for failing to understand the serious security risks in Benghazi and for maintaining facilities there that they could not protect.

The administration obviously needs to do better to protect American diplomats but Congress has to approve sufficient funds to underwrite the effort.

It is July 2012 now. The Kofi Annan Peace Plan, which had secured both Russia’s and Assad’s approval, collapsed after the June 2012 Geneva convention where Clinton and Lavrov could not agree on the personal fate of Assad. It has been one year since Obama and Clinton publicly declared that Assad must step down from power, but now had failed a year-long diplomatic attempt to achieve this goal.

Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad….

A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies…

Last week, Reuters reported that, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey had established a secret base near the Syrian border to help direct vital military and communications support to Assad’s opponents…

This “nerve center” is in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to Incirlik, a U.S. air base where U.S. military and intelligence agencies maintain a substantial presence….

The efforts to oust Assad took on a coordinated commitment at the “Friends of Syria” conferences organized throughout 2012 where the nations in attendance “committed to render all possible assistance” to the Syrian opposition. As is clear from the reports that a secret command center in Turkey was coordinating the assistance, the lynchpin of this promise for help amongst the “Friends of Syria” would lie in the relationship between the United States and Turkey.

This part of the war has remained largely under wraps in the United States because there has been no formal declaration of war against the Syrian government by Congress (or any other country) nor had the United Nations sanctioned any humanitarian or military intervention into the Syrian conflict at the time.

The “Rat Line” – weapons flow from Benghazi, Libya to Turkey then to Syria

As the name suggests, Operation Zero Footprint was supposed to be just that – a mission that was to leave no visible footprint of the US’s activities in the area. In order to avoid Congressional oversight and debates over funding, the clandestine operation was financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar with logistical and transportation support coming from Qatar and Turkey.

This entire scheme unraveled on September 11th, 2012 when a terrorist attack killed 4 Americans at the departure point of these weapons, the US consulate in Benghazi.

Unknown armed man poses at Benghazi consulate – September 2012

Both phases of Operation Zero Footprint produced uniquely disastrous results in Libya and Syria. The illegal funneling of weapons into the region to arm opposition groups not only increased the scope and scale of the bloody conflicts in the Middle East but resulted arming jihadist groups in both countries and effectively blocked any diplomatic solutions to resolve the conflict as adversaries felt emboldened to arm their side of the war because we were.

In order to fully understand the scope of the operation in Syria, it’s important to understand how the first phase was carried out in Libya as it would have significant implications for how the Syria phase would take place and why certain decisions were made the way they were.

Let’s take a few steps back to understand how the Obama administration felt it needed to respond to the uprisings in Libya in March 2011.

The first phase of Operation Zero Footprint was significant in that it was blatantly illegal under international law to be arming any side of the Libyan conflict since the U.N. had imposed an arms embargo on the country. Given its illegality, one of the emerging revelations of the Obama administration was how the conflict in Libya marked the beginning of Obama’s severely fractured relationship with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon.

Mrs. Clinton understood the hazards, but also weighed the costs of not acting, aides said. They described her as comfortable with feeling her way through a problem without being certain of the outcome.

The decision did not come with an international consensus. Brazil, China, Germany, India and Russia would notably abstain from the vote citing concerns for the need for peaceful resolution of the conflict and warned against unintended consequences of a possible armed intervention. The abstentions would allow Resolution 1973 to pass in the UN Security Council.

United Nations votes to approve No-Fly Zone over Libya – March 17th, 2011

On March 30th, 2011 Obama would validate the fears of the nations that abstained from the vote by authorizing the covert operation to arm Libya’s rebels. As Reuters reported – “President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi”

“This rebellion is the fresh breeze they’ve been waiting years for. They realize that if they don’t use this opportunity, it could be the end of their chances to turn Libya toward a real Islamic state, as Afghanistan once was.” – Senior Al Qaeda official in Afghanistan

In recovered tape recordings, a U.S. intelligence liaison working for the Pentagon told a Gaddafi aide that Obama privately informed members of Congress that Libya “is all Secretary Clinton’s matter” and that the nation’s highest-ranking generals were concerned that the president was being misinformed because the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported.

“I can tell you that the president is not getting accurate information, so at some point someone has to get accurate information to him. I can think about a way through Secretary Gates or maybe to Admiral Mullen to get him information.”

“You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,” an American intermediary from the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadafi regime in July 2011.

Instead of relying on the Defense Department or the intelligence community for analysis, senior officials believed Clinton was relying heavily on the assurances of the Libyan rebels whom she had met with and her own memory of Rwanda, where U.S. inaction in 1993 may have led to the genocide of at least 500,000 people.

“Susan Rice was involved in the Rwanda crisis in 1994, Samantha Power wrote very moving books about what happened in Rwanda, and Hillary Clinton was also in the background of that crisis as well,” said Allen Lynch, a professor of international relations at the University of Virginia. “I think they have all carried this with them as a kind of guilt complex.”

Regardless of any benevolent intentions that Clinton and her team of advisors may have had in preventing mass genocide like in Rwanda, Gaddafi’s son and heir apparent, Seif Gaddafi, told Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) in a May 2011 phone call that he was worried Secretary Clinton was using false pretenses to justify unseating his father.

Comparing it to George Bush’s de-bunked claim of WMD’s in Iraq to convince Congress to unseat Saddam Hussein, Seif Gaddafi insisted that the regime had no intention of harming a mass of civilians and risking world outrage.

“It was like the WMDs in Iraq. It was based on a false report. Libyan airplanes bombing demonstrators, Libyan airplanes bombing districts in Tripoli, Libyan army killed thousands, etc., etc., and now the whole world found there is no single evidence that such things happened in Libya.” – Seif Gaddafi, May 2011

Seif Gadhafi also warned that many of the U.S.-supported armed rebels were “not freedom fighters” but rather jihadists whom he described as “gangsters and terrorists.” Muammar Gaddafi himself had warned at the beginning of the uprisings that if he fell Libya would be overrun by Al Qaeda — a reality that quickly becoming true.

“And now you have NATO supporting them with ships, with airplanes, helicopters, arms, training, communication. We ask the American government send a fact-finding mission to Libya. I want you to see everything with your own eyes.” – Seif Gaddafi

The winds of regime change in Libya were fast underway. The United States, France and UK coalesced 19 other nations to enforce the No-Fly-Zone, institute a naval blockade and provide military logistical assistance to the rebels in Libya.

Russia and China grew outraged over what they saw as the US and its NATO allies vastly overstepping mandate of the UN resolution whose sole purpose was “to ensure the protection of the civilian population” rather than carry out regime change in Libya.

“We believe that the coalition’s intervention in the civil war has not, essentially, been sanctioned by the UN Security Council resolution” – Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov

“The implementation of the Security Council resolution is meant to offer humanitarian protection, rather than engender a greater humanitarian disaster….there has been an abuse of force by coalition members” – Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu

Leon Panetta – CIA Director from 2009-2011 during Libya operation

It was these exact sentiments that would lead foreign leaders to veto diplomatic action in Syria over fears that a similar abuse of military force would be exercised against the Assad regime. And to their credit, CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was overseeing Operation Zero Footprint in 2011, would validate Russia and China’s true suspicions of the US mission in Libya in his 2014 book “Worthy Fights”.

“In Afghanistan I misstated our position on how fast we’d be bringing troops home, and I said what everyone in Washington knew, but we couldn’t officially acknowledge: That our goal in Libya was regime change.” – Leon Panetta, “Worthy Fights”

Gaddafi stabbed to death by Libyan rebels – October 2011

Two months after the rebels capture Tripoli, the US and its NATO allies achieved the regime change in Libya they had hoped for. In October 2011, Libyan rebels would capture Muammar Gaddafi and horrifically murder him using bayonets and knives, including sodomizing him with weapons. Hillary Clinton would later remark about Gaddafi’s death (in rather weirdly happy terms), “We came, we saw, he died.”

This placed the second phase of Operation Zero Footprint after Gaddafi’s fall – the redirection of Libyan weapons into Syria – squarely in the hands of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the new CIA director David Petraeus.

Secretary of State Clinton and CIA Director David Petreaus

Phase 2 – the transfer of heavy weapons from Libya to Syria to help oust Bashar al-Assad’s regime (2012)

The violence in Libya did not end with the fall of the Gaddafi regime and his ultimate death in October 2011. Armed with advanced US weaponry, Libya descended into a longer, bloodier civil war between warring rebel groups who could not unify the country. That war is still continuing today and Libya is now considered to be a failed state with ISIS controlling large parts of the country. A result that was perhaps unsurprising when it was revealed by Secretary Gates that Clinton’s plan for Libya after Gaddafi was to “play it by ear”.

But before Libya slid again into bloody sectarian war, the Obama administration tried to re-secure the dangerous weapons they had supplied to the Libyan rebels, along with other heavy weapons in Gaddafi’s arsenal to prevent the flood of Al Qaeda soldiers from being able to use them against Western targets.

In December 2011, two months after the death of Gaddafi, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro arranged a purchase program with Libya’s new defense minister . The program was intended purchase shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles from militia members and others who gathered them up during the war — especially the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Andrew J. Shapiro – Head of State Dept’s Bureau of Political & Military Affairs

Known as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADs, the missiles are a class of weapon that includes the well-known Stinger. The version loose in large quantities in Libya, the SA-7, is an earlier Eastern bloc generation.

Assistant Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro raised the American desire to arrange a purchase program in a meeting this month with Libya’s new defense minister, according to American officials familiar with the proposal.

The United States has committed $40 million to secure Libya’s arms stockpiles, much of it to prevent the spread of Manpads. No budget has been designed for a purchase program, and the price to be paid for each missile and its components has not been determined, the official said.

Libyan rebel holds SA-7 surface-to-air MANPAD

While the US certainly supplied Libyan rebels with dangerous heavy weaponry, as per its own admission, it’s not possible to know whether MANPADs were among those given to them. The US maintains that the “buyback” program was not purchasing MANPADs it sold the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi, but ones his regime had accumulated over the years from the former Soviet Union.

In Libya, the program would not technically be a buyback, as these weapons were not provided by the West, American officials said. They were purchased from Eastern bloc suppliers during Colonel Qaddafi’s long period of arms acquisition.

In public statements Andrew Shapiro made as well as when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in front of Congress, the stated goal of the MANPAD buy-back program was to curb the risk of heavy weapons proliferation and prevent opening a “Pandora’s Box” of dangerous weapons into the wrong hands. The initiative was called “the most extensive effort to combat the proliferation of MANPADS in U.S. history.”

In November 2011, one month after the fall of Gaddafi, The Telegraph reported that Abdelhakim Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.

Abdelhakim Belhadj – commander of Tripoli Military Council and known jihadist

Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad…

A U.S. government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the United States was collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey and its allies.…

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Free Syrian Army had obtained nearly two dozen surface-to-air missiles,weapons that could be used against Assad’s helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Syrian government armed forces have employed such air power more extensively in recent days…

NBC said the shoulder-fired missiles, also known as MANPADs, had been delivered to the rebels via Turkey…

Mrs. Clinton joined forces with Mr. Petraeus to push for the administration to embrace a proposal for delivering arms. Advocates said doing so would provide the U.S. with opportunities to shape events on the ground and build alliances.

By the terms of their agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The CIA, with the support of MI6 (UK’s CIA-equivalent), was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. The weapons would move through the Benghazi consulate who’s only only mission “was to provide cover for the moving of arms.”

Turkish President Erdogan and Obama speak at the United Nations

The dots are easy enough to connect as to where the Syrian rebels suddenly got shipments of surface-to-air missile launchers from after the September 2012 terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate.

The most important revelation of the Benghazi attack was not that there was absolutely zero security for a diplomatic outpost in the most dangerous part of the world at the time, but that there was a previously unknown CIA annex 1.2 miles away from the outpost which also came under attack.

The top-secret presence and location of the CIA outpost was first acknowledged by Charlene Lamb, a top official in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, during Congressional testimony in October 2012 after the Benghazi attack, where she revealed the purpose of the CIA post.

The post had been a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles.

The initial primary objective was to reach an agreement with the TNC to set up a MANPADS control and destruction program that would enable us to set up what we call our Phase I efforts. Phase I entailed an effort to rapidly survey, secure, and disable loose MANPADS across the country. To accomplish this, we immediately deployed our Quick Reaction Force, which are teams made up of civilian technical specialists.

Of the 4 Americans who died in Benghazi, we now understand two of them – Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – were among the “civilian technical specialists” who were CIA weapons specialists at the heart of Operation Zero Footprint. They were not disabling MANPADs as Shaprio claimed, but were assisting in covertly transferring the weapons from Libya into Syria to help overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

Less than one month after the report of Obama authorizing covert aide to the Syrian rebels, two separate shipping vessels departing from Benghazi, Libya docked at Turkish ports stocked full with heavy weaponry that found their way into the hands of Syrian rebels.

On September 14th, 2012, just three days after the terrorist attack at the Benghazi consulate, another Libyan ship that left from the port of Benghazi was “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment also weighed around 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

On the night of the attack on September 11th, in what became his last public meeting Ambassador Chris Stevens reportedly met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time. According to one source this meeting was to negotiate the weapons transfers an to get SA-7 surface to air missiles out of Libya into Turkey. When asked to comment, a State Department spokeswoman dismissed the idea, saying Stevens was there for diplomatic meetings, and to attend the opening of a cultural center.

US Ambassador Chris Stevens (deceased) being taken to hospital- Benghazi, Libya

Unfortunately, the whole Benghazi terrorist attack has become so politicized that even saying the word ‘Benghazi’ has become a running joke. Many believe this whole controversy is much ado about nothing and is simply a right-wing conspiracy while the real story of the activities going on in Benghazi and its broader implication about illegal covert activity for regime change goes untouched.

Clinton testifies at the Benghazi hearing – 2013

After endless inquiries and investigations about the non-substantive issues regarding Benghazi, these two conclusions remain undoubtedly true.

2) The State Department failed to provide adequate security for the consulate in Benghazi and even rejected hundreds of requests to do so – a decision made to not draw attention to the CIA weapons transfer program taking place there.

Due to the release of Hillary’s e-mails through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits the following information has come to light. On the night of the attack Hillary Clinton e-mailed her daughter Chelsea Clinton and the next day called the Egyptian prime minister. In these communications Clinton states both that the attack was carried out by an ‘al Qaeda like group’ and even said “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest”. This intelligence became known to the US within two hours of the attack.

Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice on CBS Face the Nation – September 16th, 2012

The decision to originally deflect blame of the Benghazi attack as a protest to a YouTube video was a purely political move as Obama was in the heat of his re-election campaign against Mitt Romney (2 months before the election) and had made the defeat of Al Qaeda and “successful Libya intervention” a cornerstone of his foreign policy, while in reality the opposite was unfolding.

The true motives for the Benghazi attack are much simpler. The first being that the US was engaged in a clandestine operation that was actively taking away heavy weaponry from Al Qaeda-linked rebel groups in Libya and from Gaddafi’s arsenal and give them to Syrian rebels. The terrorists understood this plot and attacked the locations where the MANPADs were being collected and sent away so that they could keep them for themselves.

“Now I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had actually—had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back,” – Paula Broadwell, October 26th, 2012

While that was likely true, the more important driver in rejecting security was that the State Department did not want to draw attention to the covert operation taking place there.

The desire to keep the arms transfer operation low profile was made clearer by an even more intriguing revelation made by two senior military officials who said Ambassador Chris Stevens in fact twice refused additional security for the consulate offered by Army Gen. Carter Ham, then the head of the U.S. Africa Command. “He didn’t say why. He just turned it down,” a defense official present at the meeting said. “The embassy was told through back channels to not make direct requests for security,” an official familiar with the case said. What is clear is that the State Department wanted to give no reason for anyone to believe something significant was still going on Libya a year after Gaddafi’s fall.

When all the information regarding the CIA annex, the ships of weapons leaving from port of Benghazi and the presence of MANPADs and heavy weaponry delivered to Syrian rebels through Turkey was revealed, Senator Rand Paul questioned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the existence of the covert operation in the first Congressional Benghazi hearing in 2013. Senator Mike Pompeo questioned Clinton again on the issue at the October 2015 Benghazi hearing.

Sen. Rand Paul: “My question is, is the US involved in any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?”

Hillary Clinton: “To Turkey? I’ll have to take that question for the record. That’s, nobody’s ever raised that with me.”

Sen. Rand Paul: “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons. And what I’d like to know is, that annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries? Any countries, Turkey included?”

Hillary Clinton: “Well, Senator you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And, I will see what information was available.”

Sen. Rand Paul: “You’re saying you don’t know?”

Hillary Clinton: “I do not know. I don’t have any information on that.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo: “Were you aware, or are you aware of any efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, either directly or indirectly, or through a cutout to any militias or opposition to [former Libyan President Muammar] Gadhafi’s forces?”

Hillary Clinton: “That was a very long question, and I think the answer is no.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo: “Were you aware or are you aware of any U.S. efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, directly or indirectly, or through a cutout, to any Syrian rebels or militias or opposition to Syrian forces?”

Hillary Clinton: “No.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo: “Were you aware or are you aware of any efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to facilitate or support the provision of weapons to any opposition of Gadhafi’s forces, Libyan rebels or militias through a third party or country?”

This move went against the advice of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon who were all pushing for a stronger US intervention into Syria. In Congressional testimony in early 2013, it would be revealed by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the new Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey that Obama vetoed a proposal by CIA director Petraeus and Secretary Clinton and supported by Dempsey and Panetta to continue to provide such arms to the Syrian rebels.

There’s a popularly held belief that largely goes along this line – “if Obama had only armed the Syrian rebels earlier then they would have been able to avert a jihadist takeover!”

People in the intelligence community said the time to arm the rebels was 2012. The opposition was turning into a military force and hadn’t yet been overrun by al-Qaeda-linked fighters and militants.

The White House stalled the proposal because of lingering questions about which rebels could be trusted with the arms, whether the transfers would make a difference in the campaign to remove Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and whether the weapons would add to the suffering, the U.S. officials said

This would be the indecisiveness that would come to plague the Obama administration’s response to the Syrian war. After covertly sending MANPADs to Syrian rebels for months, Obama began to second guess his policy because he didn’t know if he could trust who the weapons were going to — a lesson perhaps learned too late based on the outcome in Libya (and maybe something to have figured out before illegally shipping off anti-aircraft weapons??)

This indecision would come at a critical time during the war as well as 2012 would prove to be a pivotal year in shaping the Syrian conflict. But Obama’s flip-flop on arming the Syrian rebels raises a legitimate point – who were these weapons going to in Syria?

Fighters for the Free Syrian Army

In the second chapter of this article, “(2011-2012): Armed Opposition Groups Form and Syria Descends Into Civil War”, I outlined the three components of the rebel opposition: Moderate, Jihadist and Kurdish.

Moderate forces would like to establish a free, secular government (we hope). Jihadist groups want to create an Islamist state governed by Sharia law. Kurdish forces just want a new government that is pro-Kurdish independence (remember the Kurds are an ethnic group that wants its own country, they are fighting for this slice of Syria where a majority of them live)

These were the most prominent groups at the time in 2012 in an overly simplified table of the rebel landscape.

“We talk of an army,” admits an FSA man. “But no one really controls the groups on the ground. There are too many of them. The culture of martyrdom means that some no longer know what they are fighting for.”

When Obama announced the covert operation to provide assistance to the Syrian opposition on August 1st, 2012, more than a year into the Syrian uprising, there had already been concern at the time about the growing presence of jihadists among the rebel factions

Recent news reports from the region have suggested that the influence and numbers of Islamist militants, some of them connected to al Qaeda or its affiliates, have been growing among Assad’s opponents.

U.S. and European officials say that, so far, intelligence agencies do not believe the militants’ role in the anti-Assad opposition is dominant. – REUTERS

However, US intelligence agencies did not in fact think jihadist militants played only a minor role amongst the Syrian rebel groups.

B. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA

C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) soldiers in Syria

By its own admission, US intelligence was in fact saying that extremist ideologies were the principle driving forces behind the Syrian opposition, not secular democratic reformers like the administration wanted to believe. A reality that was supported by developments on the ground as the better trained and equipped Jabhat al-Nusra was actually succeeding on the battlefield against the Assad regime rather than the Free Syrian Army.

“The Salafist“, known in Western-lingo as Wahhabis, represent an Islamic school of thought which has a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam that principally fuels jihadi movements around the world. There are several Salafist-rooted Syrian rebel groups in addition to Jabhat al-Nusra like Ahrar al-Sham, Fatah al-Islam and Abdullah Azzam.

AQI is Al Qaeda in Iraq, who’s leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi created Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and would later go on to form the Islamic State (ISIS). Their presence was increasingly escalating in Syria as differences between al Nusra and AQI began to emerge over control of territory and leadership.

These were the principle factions that US intelligence was privately reporting were driving the Syrian rebel movement at the time, yet the US still decided to ship surface to air anti-aircraft missiles into Syria.

The administration’s Syria policy now had become the same as its Libya policy, an outcome the Obama administration was determined not to repeat at the onset.

This reality of a Syrian opposition that was becoming dominated by jihadists was likely behind the ending of Operation Zero Footprint followed by the political fallout of the Benghazi attack in exposing the CIA annex.

Even though there was a strong jihadist presence in Syria, the fall of 2012 (when Obama would end the covert transfer of weapons) would ironically be the same time the moderate opposition would begin to get its bearings.

On November 11th, 2012 the Syrian National Coalition was formed in Doha, Qatar as an umbrella organization for the Syrian opposition to negotiate – they had the backing of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, France, Libya, Turkey and Britain . They even appointed an Alawite, Munzer Makhous, to head the council as a sign of its minority-friendly inclusiveness. The Free Syrian Army was gunning towards the capitol Damascus and was scoring several decisive victories around Aleppo (Syria’s largest city) and Homs (central transportation hub to all other major Syrian cities). The rebels were virtually on Assad’s doorstep by the end of November 2012.

“We’ve made a decision that the Syrian opposition coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime,” Obama told ABC’s Barbara Walters at the White House.

However, Obama would maintain that he was not ready to start supplying heavy weapons to the Free Syrian Army because of fears that these heavy weapons would fall into jihadist hands. The rebel groups heading down to Damascus stopped being just the Free Syrian as they were joined by the al Nusra front who were critical in the fight against Assad.

“Not everybody who’s participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who we are comfortable with,” Obama said. “There are some who, I think, have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are going to make clear to distinguish between those elements.” – President Obama with Barbara Walters, December 2012

The Syrian rebels on the ground were outraged just as they were beginning to turn the tide of the war.

“Obviously these are all just excuses for the fact that they don’t want to be on the side of the Syrians,” he said. “If the United States wanted Assad to be gone, he would be gone by now.”……“There was protecting minorities. Then there was the lack of unity in the political opposition,” he said. “Now we have unity, so they use extremism. And the fact that they talk about extremism brings about extremism. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.” – Abdul Razzaq Tlass, Commander of Farouk Brigade

This made it so they would receive no US support and would make it illegal for Americans to have financial dealings with the group and the US Treasury could freeze any assets that would go to support them. The hope was to remove one of the biggest obstacles to increasing Western support for the rebellion: the fear that money and arms could flow to a jihadi group that could further destabilize Syria and harm Western interests.

“These are the men for the people of Syria, these are the heroes who belong to us in religion, in blood and in revolution” – Syrian opposition petition

Jabhat al-Nusra turned to winning the hearts in minds in Syria as they understood that an effective insurgency needed the support of the people in order to govern the country not just military victories. They began de-facto governing the cities they overtook – distributing fresh vegetables, bread, cooking oil, water and blankets to Syrians in rebel-held areas where the international community was providing no relief from the Assad regime’s brutal bombing campaigns

“It’s a way for them to win hearts and minds even if people don’t agree with their ideology,” said Aaron Y Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They are essentially trying to build a constituency and build support within society.”

At a meeting in Damascus in 2012, Abu Hussein al-Afghani, a veteran of insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, addressed frustrated young rebels. They lacked money, weapons and training, so they listened attentively.

He told them he was a leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, now working with a Qaeda branch in Syria, and by joining him, they could make their mark. One fighter recalled his resonant question: “Who is hearing your voice today?”

The success of al Nusra and the other Syrian rebel groups would even lead the Russian government to admit by the end of 2012 that Assad was losing the war. This made the move by Obama to black-list Jabhat al Nusra as an attempt by the US to hijack the Syrian rebel movement to decide for themselves what a post-Assad Syria could look like.

“The people are not going to accept intervention by the West now. You were watching us die, and now that we are close to victory you want to intervene? You are not welcome.” – Ous al-Arabi, spokesman of the Deir al-Zour Revolutionary council.

“It is terrible timing on the part of the United States,” said Mulham Jundi, who works with the opposition charity Watan Syria. “By calling Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists, the US is legitimising the Syrian regime’s bombardment of cities like Aleppo. Now government can say it is attacking terrorists.”

The Obama administration’s Syria policy was quickly collapsing on all fronts. Though its hard to say where it originally went off the rails.

– The US emphasized a political solution to the Syrian conflict for a year after demanding that Assad step down (August 2011-August 2012) which ended with Secretary Clinton foiling the Kofi Annan Peace Plan at the June 2012 Geneva Conference, effectively ending any political solution to the war.

– The US then began covertly shipping surface-to-air missiles from Libya to Turkey hoping to bolster the Free Syrian Army, but by this point various jihadist groups had already moved into Syria and were now controlling the momentum on the ground

– The US then backtracked and ended the weapons transfer program and blacklisted the strongest rebel group in Syria as a terror group causing severe blowback amongst the moderate opposition for not helping them OR the group(s) they were working with and were actually achieving success against Assad.

Ammar al-Wawi, another early FSA official who commands a battalion in Aleppo, said that the United States shoulders much of the blame for rebel disunity. America was like a “sorcerer,” he said, holding other nations under its powerful spell to keep them from supporting the rebels. “All the other countries can’t take a firm stance without the United States doing something. So their lack of action is their action,” he said.

There really were no good options for the US, which is why maybe Obama and Clinton should have never demanded Assad step down to begin with or try and funnel weapons at time the negotiations for a peace deal were happening. It would even be reported later that Obama rejected a 2012 CIA covert operation to assassinate Bashar al-Assad.

Fed up with an undecipherable US policy on Syria – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey started overtaking the direction of the Syrian opposition.

Streams of funding and weapons started coming from the increasingly frustrated governments of Saudi Arabia Qatar and Turkey, as well as independent Salafist donors spread throughout the Gulf who were itching for Assad to be gone.

This ultimately served to further bolster extremism amongst the Syrian rebels.

In September and October, the Saudis approached Croatia to procure more Soviet-era weapons.

The US now had absolutely no idea what was going to the Syrian rebels who were increasingly espousing a jihadist message to get money and weapons from shady Gulf donors. But with over 20,000 people having died in Syria now under indiscriminate bombing campaigns by Assad and the even more insidious use of barrel bombs, the Obama administration was under increasing pressure to intervene in Syria.